Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the nature of the relationship between Britain and its American
colonies in the period from 1660 to 1713.
Passage A
The English mercantile system, if judged by its own principles, was one of the nation’s most solid successes. In the mid-eighteenth century its achievements were clear for all to see. By the seventeenth century the English overseas possessions had come to play an essential part in mercantilist thought. Economic self-sufficiency was always the aim. All members of the Empire would contribute to the prosperity. From this basis the trade of the world would be captured, and thus the wealth and glory of England would be even greater. The colonies were merely a means to achieving this aim. Not for one moment were they supposed to have any purpose of their own. They existed for the sake of the mother country. The colonists’ interests could never be allowed to take precedence over Britain’s. Their role was simply to provide cheaply, those things – chiefly crops such as sugar, rice and tobacco – which the English could not grow at home. They would also furnish the English merchant with a market which he could profitably monopolise, once effective laws had been passed excluding foreign competitors; and such laws, the celebrated Navigation Acts, were passed between 1651 and 1696. England grew rich on the system as she was meant to.
Adapted from: H. Brogan, Longman History of the United States of America, published in 1987.
Passage B
England had a monopoly power to buy colonial products. At the same time, the sugar and tobacco and other products of the colonies were more or less guaranteed the entire English market by a system of favourable tariffs. The tariffs on foreign sugar were well over twice that on English West Indian sugar in 1661 and the margin was widened later. Bounties, or subsidies, were paid to colonial producers of naval stores and indigo dye. Measures like this gave the colonies a secure market and also provided larger supplies of tropical goods than could be consumed in England, so English merchants could develop their re-export trade. On balance, the trading aspects of what came to be known as the Old Colonial System probably favoured England more than the colonies, though the colonial monopoly of English markets balanced out the English monopoly of colonial trade. The English did not want to be out of pocket over expansion in America, but they realised that military and naval support for the colonies was going to be needed and cost money. The colonies at first had been left to look after themselves because the king had no money to spare for defending them nor any forces he could send across the Atlantic, but after 1650 it was accepted that the colonies had a right to expect to be protected against European attack. The Navigation Acts were not in the first instance devised to make up for the fact that some English revenue was devoted to colonial defence, but defending the colonies became to be seen as an integral part of the Old Colonial System.
Adapted from: T. Lloyd, The British Empire 1558–1983, published in 1984.
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Answer
